Nirvana: The Last Nightmare: Learning to Trust in Life

Summary

Nirvana has become an idealized word associated with the juxtaposition of a cult rock celebrity who died before his time and a vague new age version of Eastern religion. An altered state to be hoped for, but likely unattainable, reinforcing that all too familiar uneasiness associated with never being able to have what we truly desire in life.

Osho masterfully brings this internal state of tension to the surface and through the use of five beautiful Zen stories examines, unravels and reveals the meaning of nirvana. By absorbing without interpreting, making a decision without worrying if it is the right one, or surrendering to each moment, it is possible to come to a point where we simply drop through the manifestations of the ego. In that moment, living an ordinary life becomes an extraordinary delight.

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Nirvana - Osho

India

preface

Nirvana is a state of unconditional acceptance. Wherever you are, if you can accept your life with totality, with joy, with gratitude, if you can see your life as a gift, then nirvana is never a problem. The problem arises only because you don’t accept your life, you reject life. And the moment you reject life you start looking for some other life; you become worried about whether it is going to be better than this life or not. It may be worse. That’s what hell is: the fear of a worse life than this. And that is nirvana: the greed for a better life than this. But there in no other life; there is no hell, no heaven. Only fools are interested in such things.

These heaven – hell concepts have nothing to do with geography or space, and they don’t have anything to do with time either. So it is not a question of tomorrows, not a question of something after death. It is a question of understanding, it is a question of meditation. It is a question of becoming utterly silent, herenow. There is no other space than the here, and no other time than the now. These two words contain the whole existence: now, here.

My suggestion to you is, forget about nirvana. Nirvana means something that will happen after this life – don’t be concerned about it. Be concerned about this moment because this is the only true moment there is, and enter into it. That very entrance is the entrance into nirvana. And once you have found it, nobody can take it away from you.

Osho

Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol.1

CHAPTER 1

mastered by zen

Date-Jitoku, a fine waka poet, wanted to master Zen. With this in mind he made an appointment to see Ekkei, abbot of Shokokuji in Kyoto. Jitoku went to the master full of hopes, but as soon as he entered the room he received a blow.

He was astonished and mortified: no one had ever dared to strike him before, but as it is a strict Zen rule never to say or do anything unless asked by the master, he withdrew, silently. He went at once to Dokuon, who was to succeed Ekkei as abbot, and told him that he planned to challenge Ekkei to a duel.

Can’t you see that the master was being kind to you? said Dokuon.

Exert yourself in zazen and you will see for yourself what his treatment of you means.

For three days and nights Jitoku engaged in desperate contemplation, then, suddenly, he experienced an ecstatic awakening. This satori was approved by Ekkei.

Jitoku called on Dokuon and thanked him for his advice, saying: "If it hadn’t been for your wisdom I would not have had such a transfiguring experience.

And as for the master, his blow was far from hard enough."

There are a thousand and one poisons, but nothing like idealism – it is the most poisonous of all poisons. Of course, the most subtle: it kills you, but kills you in such a way that you never become aware of it. It kills you with a style. The ways of idealism are very cunning. Rarely does a person become aware that he has been committing suicide through it. Once you become aware, you become religious.

Religion is not an ideology. Religion does not believe in any ideals. Religion is to become aware of the impossibility of idealism – of all idealism. Religion is to live here and now, and idealism goes on conditioning your mind to live somewhere else. And only the now exists. There is no other way to live.

The only way is to be here. You cannot be there. The tomorrow is non-existent, it never comes, and idealism believes in the tomorrow. It sacrifices the today at the altar of the tomorrow. It goes on saying to you, Do something, improve yourself. Do something, change yourself. Do something, become perfect. It appeals to the ego.

Idealism belongs to the world of the ego. It appeals to the ego that you can be more perfect than you are; in fact you should be more perfect than you are. But each moment is perfect and it cannot be more perfect than it is. To understand this is the beginning of a new life, is the beginning of life. To miss this is to commit suicide.

Then you go on destroying this moment for the moment which never comes. Then you go on destroying this life for some life which exists nowhere. You go on destroying this world for some other world – some paradise, some moksha, some nirvana. To sacrifice the present for the future is to be trapped in death.

To live the moment, to live it totally and freely, is to delight in existence, is to celebrate it. And that is the only way of being; there is no other way. Idealism has put you on the wrong track.

The first thing to be understood: you are perfect. If somebody says to you that you have to become perfect, he is the enemy. Beware of him! Escape from him as soon as possible. Don’t let him poison your being. Don’t let him destroy you. He may have been destroyed by others; now he is doing the same to you. He himself may be a victim. Have compassion on him, but don’t allow him to destroy you. He has not lived his life. He has only hoped; he has not lived. He has only dreamt; he has not lived. He has only prepared, planned; he has not lived.

The idealist mind goes on preparing for something that never happens. It is a nightmare. It goes on preparing and preparing – infinite preparations for a journey that never starts. It goes on planning in a thousand and one ways: subtle, cunning, clever. But the whole thing is pointless, because each moment it is denying life.

Life is knocking at your door each moment and you are denying it, because you say you are preparing for it. You say, How can I receive the guest right now? I am not ready. By and by you become so accustomed to preparing that preparation becomes your life.

You have missed. This type of mind is constantly missing, and the more it misses, the more it plans desperately – to go somewhere, to reach somewhere, to attain something, to be somebody. And the misery of all miseries is that it is not going to happen.

Life is already available. You need not prepare for it. You are already entitled to enjoy it. By just being alive, you are already ready. Because you breathe, you are already capable. Because you can be conscious, you are already ready. Nothing is lacking.

Once you take the first wrong step, the whole journey goes wrong. The first step defines and decides your whole life. Never try to be perfect, otherwise you will be caught in a dead routine – preparing and preparing. You can watch yourself, you can watch others. People who have become addicted to idealism live a life of ritual, of empty gestures. They are always waiting: some great thing is going to happen. It never happens of course, because it cannot happen that way.

It is happening right now, here, and their eyes are fixed somewhere there, far away. It is happening at close quarters. It is already happening near your heart. Where your heart is beating, it is already happening – and they are looking at the sky.

So they make a life of routine, dead routine. They move like dead corpses – waiting and waiting and waiting. And every day they know death is coming near; they become more and more desperate. Their whole life will turn into a mechanical routine.

If you want to really live, you have to be spontaneous. Life is spontaneous. Be available to this moment. Allow this moment to lead you. Don’t plan for it otherwise you will live in empty gestures, obsessed with dead routine, just thinking as if, if you plan your life completely, some day or other the great happening is going to result.

Do you think life is a result? Life is not a result; it is already there. It is a grace. Nothing is to be done to attain to it. What have you done to be born? What have you done so that you can breathe? What have you done so that you can be conscious? What have you done so that you can fall in love? It has happened. It is a sheer grace, a gift. Yes, let me tell you – life is a gift. Don’t think that it is going to be a result. Once you think it is going to be a result, it is never going to be there at all.

Then there are a few people who will go on waiting and waiting, and they will die. Almost ninety-nine percent of people die this way. Their whole life has been a sheer waste. One percent of people – sometimes by chance, accident – become aware that they are wasting their life. Then their whole training and conditioning takes a subtle revenge.

The day that they become aware they have been waiting for something which is not waiting for them, which is not going to happen, they start saying that life is meaningless. First they were waiting for some meaning; now, because that meaning is not happening, they say life is meaningless. First they were waiting for some purpose; now, because it is not happening, they say life is purposeless.

Ask Jean-Paul Sartre. He says, Man is a useless passion. It does not say anything about man. It does not say anything about life. It does not say anything about existence. It simply says that Sartre has missed. It simply says that he was waiting for some utilitarian end to be fulfilled in life and now he has become aware that it is not going to be fulfilled. He was waiting for some meaning. Now, seeing it, realizing it – that that meaning is not going to be – he says life is meaningless.

Life is neither. It is neither meaningful nor is it meaningless. If there is really no meaning, how can life be meaningless? If there is no purpose, how can life be purposeless? For life to be purposeless there must be a purpose. For life to be meaningless, for even the word meaningless to be meaningful, there must be a meaning.

Life is neither. It simply is there in sheer beauty with no purpose. Look at the trees. Look at the sunlight. Just – it is. What is the purpose of the sun rising every day in the morning? What is the purpose of trees blossoming? What is the purpose of birds singing? No purpose. I don’t say purposelessness; I simply say no purpose. It is.

Drop your search for meaning, because that search either will destroy your whole life and you will live in misery, or, one day if you become aware, then another anguish will surround you – the anguish of meaninglessness.

Sartre says, Life is nauseating. He must have been expecting too much. Now the fulfillment is receding further away and he feels a rumbling in the stomach, nausea, an illness, a sea-sickness. He was expecting too much. Now all expectations are turning into frustrations and life has become nauseating.

It is not. Life has nothing to do with nausea, because it has nothing to do with your expectations. Once you get out of this trap of idealism, you are available to life and life is available to you.

Somewhere Friedrich Nietzsche has said, Where can I feel at home? Where? He must be seeking a womb, a home, a mother. He must have been a little childish. He must have been stuck somewhere in his growth. Why are you seeking a home?

Life is not a home, but it is not homelessness either. It is. Simply, it is. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. It is not going to become a home for you, but it is homelessness – no it is not that either. The very search for a home makes life look like homelessness. Drop the search. The very search throws you away from life. You go on missing the present moment.

So either you can wait – a futile waiting; or you can become angry – a futile anger. If you go on waiting, your life will be obsessed with routine. You will try to become an automaton.

Let me tell you an anecdote:

Mr. Smith had killed his wife, and his entire defense was based on temporary insanity. He was a witness on his own behalf and was asked by his lawyer to describe the crime in his own words.

Your Honor, he began, I am a quiet, peaceful man of systematic habits, who virtually never bothers anybody. I get up at seven every morning, have breakfast at half-past seven, punch in at work at nine, leave work at five, come home at six, find supper on the table, eat it, read, watch TV, bed. Until the day in question. Here he paused to breathe passionately.

His lawyer said gently, Go on. What happened on the day in question?

On the day in question, said Smith, I woke at seven, had breakfast at seven-thirty, began work at nine, left at five and came home at six. There was no supper on the table and no sign of my wife. I searched through the house and found her in the bedroom in bed with a strange man. So I killed her.

What were your emotions at the time you killed her? asked the lawyer, anxious to get the point on the record.

I was in a white-hot fury, said the defendant, mad with rage, simply out of my mind, and unable to control myself. He turned to the jury and, pounding the arm of the witness chair, cried out, Gentlemen, when I come home at six o’clock, supper has to be on the table!

That was his reason for killing his wife – not that she was in bed with a strange man. Supper has to be on the table exactly at six o’clock!

Are you aware that you are also more or less obsessed with a dead routine? Why are people so obsessed with a dead routine? They are so obsessed with a dead routine because if the chain of their routine is broken, suddenly, underneath they see a futile life, a useless life, a meaningless life. Somehow they are trying to give it a feeling of meaning, an aroma of meaning. Somehow they are trying to forget that they are living uselessly, that they are not living at all.

They make a dead routine; they follow it. Just by following it like a mechanism, they have a feeling that everything is going perfectly well. They get up exactly at the right time, they go to the office, they come home, they read the newspaper, they watch TV, they take their food, they go to sleep – everything is going as it should go. A dead routine gives the feeling that everything is perfectly right. Underneath, everything is in chaos. They are missing life.

Idealism, to me, means living for some ideal to be fulfilled in the future. The future is not part of time; it is only part of desire. Ordinarily you think that past, present and future are divisions of time. You are wrong. They are not divisions of time. Time is only present, always present, never otherwise. The past is just in the memory, in the mind. It is not part of time; it is part of the mind. And the future is also part of the mind – the desire. The past, memory; the future, desire. And between the two is the very small moment, the atomic moment of time which is present, which is always present.

Time comes always as now. If you are missing the now, you are committing suicide. Maybe it is slow, that’s why you are not aware. You are postponing life for some ideal. Then your life will become a dead routine, futile. You are simply wasting a great opportunity – but wasting for beautiful words. Somebody is trying to become perfect. Somebody is trying to become a sage. Somebody is trying to become a mahatma. Somebody is trying to become something else.

Be – and forget becoming. Becoming is the nightmare. Relax. You are perfect. Life as it is, is perfect, each moment of it.

It is very difficult to accept it, because you have been conditioned for centuries. You have been given ideals and you go on comparing with ideals. You say, How can I be perfect? – I still have anger in me. How can I be perfect? – I still have sex in me. How can I be perfect? – I still have violence in me. How can I be perfect? You are comparing. Comparison is the disease, the very illness. You are you!

If anger is there, what can you do? You have to accept it. If you try first to be beyond anger and then live, you will never live. Listen to me. Accept the anger and live. And I tell you – by living, the anger will disappear. Transformation happens through living, not through preparations. The more you prepare, the more you become hung-up in the head. Relax. Enjoy. But the ego goes on like a hard taskmaster. It goes on saying, Why are you wasting your time in small things, trivia? Become a great man! Become a Buddha, become a Mahavira, become a Christ!

Christ was never trying to become a Christ, that’s why he was a Christ. He simply accepted himself, through that acceptance he flowered. Mahavira was not trying to become somebody else. He had no ideals. He simply lived his life, he simply did his thing, and life happened to him. It always happens. It is always happening.

It is not that life is not happening; it is that you are missing it. It is a simple fact. I am not talking philosophy. It is a simple statement of a fact. Right now, look! What are you missing? Nobody is missing anything.

I was reading one of Emerson’s essays. He says, Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say ‘I am.’ He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones. They are what they are. They exist with God today.

Let this be the very foundation of your life, They exist with God today. They don’t refer to the former roses. They don’t compare with better roses. They are simply themselves and they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose. It is perfect in every moment of its existence.

Perfection is not a goal; it is already there. You are born perfect; only perfection happens in this existence, nothing else. How can imperfection happen out of existence? Only perfection is possible.

The idea that you have to be perfect makes you imperfect in the present, because the comparison arises. You go on comparing yourself with others: somebody is more beautiful, somebody is more intelligent, somebody is more moral, somebody is more sincere, somebody is healthier, somebody is stronger. You are crippled in these comparisons; such a dead weight falls on your head that you cannot move. But you have forgotten one thing: you are you, and you cannot be anybody else.

Once you accept the fact that you are you and whatsoever you do you are not going to be anybody else, you are going to remain yourself; once you accept it a transfiguration happens. You start living. Then you don’t bother about the future. Then you are not in the rat race of being somebody else. Then you are no longer comparative, no longer competitive. Then you also become a rose under the window, you exist with God today. If you are not existing with it today, you will be in a nightmare.

Buddha realized this. He was the first man to realize it in its absoluteness. He dropped all ideals. People would come to him and ask, Is there God? and he would remain silent. Not that there is no God, but once he says there is, a desire arises in you to achieve, to know, to be – and then you are on the wrong track again. Buddha remained silent. He would not say anything about God. People would ask, Okay, if God is not there, it is nothing to be worried about. Is there a soul inside? Buddha would keep silent, because once he says, Yes, there is a soul, then you are after it.

You have become such addicted chasers of shadows that any word, any hint will do, and you are on the track, running. Chasing has become your life. Chase something, money, moksha – it makes no difference, but chase. Power, prestige, meditation – it makes no difference, but chase.

I can understand how difficult it was for this man Buddha to keep quiet when he knew well that God is, when he knew well the soul is. How difficult it was to keep quiet. He resisted the temptation because he knew you. Never has anybody known humanity so deeply – and the madness of humanity, the obsession with ideals.

People would ask, "When we attain, when we become realized and enlightened, where will we be then? Will there be a moksha, a state of total freedom?" Buddha remained quiet. He dropped the old eastern term moksha, the state of total freedom. He invented a new term – nirvana.

The term is beautiful. The word is very significant. Nirvana simply means cessation. You will not be. Nothing will be. He used a negative term, just so that you cannot make an ideal of it. How can you make an ideal of a negative state? Anything positive becomes an ideal and you start chasing it. He used the most negative term, the absolute negativity – nirvana. Nothing will be there. Only nothingness will be there. You will cease to be.

Look at the human mind; the human mind has made a goal of it. Buddha tried to give you a totally negative term so that you cannot make an ideal of it. But since then people have made an ideal out of it, millions of people are chasing nirvana. They have completely forgotten that nirvana simply means nothing. It means absolute void. It means emptiness.

How can you chase emptiness? The chaser has to cease, only then is the emptiness there – so how can you chase it? How can you seek it? The seeker has to drop. You have to disappear completely, utterly.

People have even made a goal of that. The mind seems to be so addicted, that whatsoever is said, it will make a goal out of it. For example, I go on saying be here and now, and I know well you will try to be here and now. You miss the point – because in the very trying you have missed. You cannot try to be here and now, because by the time you are trying, the here and now is passing. You can simply relax. You can be, but you cannot try. If you understand me – finished! Then there is nothing to be done.

But you go on coming to me. You ask me, What is to be done? I go on telling you, Do this, do that. That is just a way to tire you, to exhaust you. So that one day, out of sheer tiredness you say, No more! and you relax. Otherwise nothing is lacking. When I see you, you are buddhas – chasing empty shadows. Then each and everything becomes a nightmare.

An old man was sitting on a park bench, enjoying the late spring sunshine, when another old man sat down at the other end of the bench. They viewed each other cautiously and finally one of them heaved a tremendous, heartfelt sigh.

The other rose at once and said, If you’re going to talk politics, I’m leaving.

If you feel that somebody is going to give you an ideal and goal, leave him immediately, because the disease is very infectious and once you are caught in it, it becomes chronic. Nothing has to be done. The doing has to be dropped – not by effort, but by understanding.

If you understand that goals have not helped you, if you understand that becoming has not helped you, then in that understanding, something within you stops. In that understanding, something falls, drops of its own accord. Not that you drop it; otherwise you will come to me and ask, How to drop it? How to drop this constant chasing? How to drop ideals?

No, you cannot drop it. If you are trying to drop it – again here you go. You cannot drop it; it will drop of its own accord. Simply understand, understanding is enough; understanding is the only transformation.

When you are following an idea, an ideology, an ideal, a goal, you are bound to imitate others – bound to. You are bound to follow others, because from where will you get the cues? Then you are bound to follow Christ, Buddha, Mahavira. And never has there been a man like you or a woman like you. You are simply unique.

You cannot follow a Buddha, you cannot follow me. You can watch me, but you cannot follow me. You can love me, but you cannot follow me. You can understand me, but you cannot follow me. Once you follow me, you will